Levelling up or down? Examining the case of North-East England

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the levelling up (LU) debate by examining the case of the North-East of England, a region with long-standing and deep-seated historical issues of inequality. It will determine if centrally directed LU policies are appropriate and necessary interventions by charting the evolution of UK policy shifts and impacts on the region. In analysing the past failed policies and current situation, including the Devolution Deal, the authors point to some of the critical challenges and opportunities still facing regional leaders. It concludes by arguing that the region is at an impasse and calls for a regional summit to agree on regional priorities and more robust and effectively targeted strategies for the future. Overall, the paper suggests that without the correct policy interventions and the capacity to deliver them, levels of inequality will persist.


Introduction
In his first speech as Prime Minister, Rish Sunak reaffirmed his dedication to 'levelling up and building an economy that embraces the opportunities of Brexit, where businesses invest, innovate, and create jobs' (Sunak, 2022).The re-appointment of Michael Gove as the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations was widely seen as a signal of the new Prime Minister's commitment to the levelling up agenda.Gove, who has been reported to have an unlikely bond with the current North of Tyne Combined Authority mayor, Jamie Driscoll, was previously responsible for delivering the Levelling Up White Paper and was widely seen as a crucial figure in delivering the devolution agenda.Although the emphasis on levelling up had experienced a lull for some time, particularly since the end of the Johnson government, the publication of the Long Term Plan for Towns in October 2023 has once again brought levelling up to the forefront of discussion in the current Sunak administration only to be trounced by the cancellation of HS2 and net zero policies that have endangered the idea of levelling up the North.
This paper aims to contribute to the levelling up debate by examining the case of the North-East of England, a region with long-standing and deep-seated historical issues of inequality.It will determine if policies included in the levelling up agenda are appropriate and necessary interventions by central government to address the myriad of social and economic issues evident across the region.Firstly, the paper charts the evolution of UK policy shifts and their impacts in the North East, followed by an analysis of the current situation, in particular revealing how the new devolution deal might impact the region and alter central and sub-national relationships.In the latter part of the paper, we focus on the importance of stronger leadership to engage and address some of the future challenges and opportunities.In conclusion, we argue that some fundamental problems still need to be resolved as levelling up is too slow, lacks integration and awareness of capacity issues.
2. Reviewing the evidence: the current situation in north east England Regional inequalities in the UK can be traced back as far as the 1850s (Martin, 1988).Despite a plethora of successive initiatives, the UK remains more inter-regionally unequal than other comparable OECD countries (McCann, 2019).In particular, the North-East region of England continues to lag behind the country on several key indicators (see Table 1), with the trickle-down approach remaining ineffective.The latest employment data as of July 2023 shows an increase in the employment rate by 2.7% and a decrease in economic activity by 3.4% when compared to the same period in 2022, indicating positive progress, albeit the unemployment rate remains above the national average of 4.3%, currently standing at 5.2% (ONS, 2023).Health inequalities continue to undermine the region's labour market, with individuals in the region being twice as likely to leave employment due to illness compared to those in the South East (Thomas, 2022), and healthy life expectancy in the region remains the lowest in the UK at 59.1 years (White, 2022).Living standards in the region also continue to suffer.Although living standards have stagnated nationally since the 2008 financial crisis, the North East has seen the most significant rise of all regions in the number of individuals residing in households below the minimum income standard.As of 2019, the region had the highest proportion nationally, with 35.9% of its population residing in households struggling with inadequate income (Padley & Stone, 2023), a challenge only amplified by the cost of living crisis.Salaries in the region persist as the lowest across the UK, and, akin to all other regions in the country when adjusted for CPI inflation, they have experienced a real-time decline since 2019 (Francis-Devine, 2022).In 2021/21, the child poverty rate in the region overtook London to have the highest rate in the UK at 38%, with the rate in some areas of the region more than 40% (End Child Poverty Coalition, 2022).According to our assessment from late 2022, only one of the 12 levelling-up missions, crime, is making satisfactory progress (Forbes et al., 2022).Although the region has a good track record in encouraging regional inward investment, its core cities and urban areas are still struggling.There are particular concerns regarding poverty and deprivation levels in the south of the region and the Teesside area and a lack of consistent attention to integrated policymaking.
The economic growth agenda continues to dominate, with the social and environmental agendas receiving less attention, and the focus on towns at the expense of integration remains unhelpful.
3. Evolution of UK policy: from industrial strategies to levelling up Regional inequalities in the UK can be primarily attributed to the persistent disparities in productivity between London and its surrounding areas and the rest of the UK, largely driven by the underperformance of cities (Stansbury et al., 2023).Various attempts have been made to tackle such productivity disparity, with almost 40 separate schemes or bodies being introduced to boost local or regional growth between 1975 and 2015 (Diamond et al., 2023); such short-term, inconsistent and poorly coordinated policy approaches consistently disrupting necessary long-term structural transformations (Coyle & Muhtar, 2023).Since 2010, Conservative-led Governments have abolished Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and Government Offices (GOs) in favour of a 'devolution' underpinned by arguments associated with the benefits of agglomeration economics and redistribution (Hoole et al., 2023).Initially, this took the form of 39 Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) that, while originally intended to provide a limited steering role to local authorities, played a more significant role in economic development following the Heseltine Report in 2012.However, internal LEP capabilities varied significantly.Such capacity differences had a notable impact on their ability to reduce special imbalances, resulting in a two-tier LEP structure (Fai & Tomlinson, 2019).LEP responsibilities included the drafting and implementing Local Industrial Strategies, an endeavour marked by fragmentation and the absence of well-defined governance parameters, which gave rise to discernible deficiency in fostering meaningful discourse on the challenges facing the North East region (Shutt & Liddle, 2020).We now find that Sunak is to abolish LEPs from April 2024, transferring their responsibilities to existing local and combined authorities; the North East LEP is to be absorbed into the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA) in May 2024.In the North East, the LEP focused on advanced manufacturing, high tech, energy and health and life sciences, arguing that the evidence prescribes the region has a distinct opportunity to improve economic competitiveness.Boris Johnsons' ten-point plan for industrial strategy helped focus attention on wind power and electric battery technologies (HM Government, 2020), but the latter has so far failed to be delivered in the region (Conway, 2023).The existing North East Strategic Economic Plan, which originated out of the North East Independent Economic Review in 2013 (North East Local Enterprise Partnership, 2022), is now in need of a complete revision following the COVID-19 pandemic and the demise of the LEP into the new MCA.

The current policy context
As the latest effort to address regional inequality, the levelling up agenda has continually been overshadowed by a turbulent multi-dimensional policy context.The COVID-19 pandemic shifted immediate government focus to tackling the unprecedented health crisis and away from its domestic agenda.The pandemic's enduring social, economic, and cultural impact has continued into 2023 and will continue beyond.The current cost-of-living crisis threatens to persist as the second public health crisis in three years.Driven primarily by consumer demand, supply chain bottlenecks, and increasing energy prices, the cost of living across the UK increased significantly during 2021 and 2022, the annual inflation rate reaching a 41-year high of 11.1% in October 2022.Energy prices have increased significantly; between January 2022 and January 2023, domestic gas and electricity prices increased by 129% and 67%, respectively, predominantly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Francis-Devine et al., 2023).As a result, the public has seen the cost of essentials outstrip wage increases and welfare payments negatively impacting health and wellbeing, having the greatest impact on those on low incomes.The economy also remains under the influence of the Brexit fallout, including reduced trade and openness, increased red tape for British businesses, reduced investment and worsening economic performance that threatens to continue to undercut the economy's prosperity (Spisak & Tsoukalis, 2023).These changes have hit the North East region very hard.Since 2019, Whitehall has overseen four primary funds designed to encourage local economic growth.These are the Towns Fund, the Community Renewal Fund, the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, and the Levelling Up Fund (see Table 2).In addition to the primary funding schemes, the government has also allocated smaller funding pots to the region.In February 2023, Blyth was awarded £20.7 million from DLUHC, the majority of funding for housing regeneration.Similarly, Ashington is set to receive £16 million for the regeneration of the town centre, and a new deal was mooted for South Tyneside.The government also announced a 'Long-Term Plan for Towns' in September 2023 in which 55 towns, including six in the North East, have been allocated a ten-year £20 million endowment-style fund managed by local people.The Government claims the fund 'marks a change in approach that will put an end to people feeling like their town is ignored by Westminster and empower communities to take back control of their future, taking long-term decisions in the interests of local people' (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 2023).
While the deals may be welcome in these localities, the reality remains that the capacity of local government is weak.As recently argued by Engel, we may be witnessing the death of local government, policy and politics, which is the most enfeebled in Europe (Engel, 2023).Many local authorities are struggling to deliver limited funds and projects that threaten to undermine progress and risk strategic delivery.Capacity remains a significant barrier to procurement, with 86% of local authority managers reporting high or very high levels of workload pressure on procurement professionals (Liddle, 2022).The ability of local authorities to deliver levelling up projects is apparent when assessing expenditure as of July 2023; local authorities in the North East have spent 26.6% of Future High Streets Funding (expenditure deadline March 24), 11.2% of Town Deal funding (expenditure deadline March 26) and 13.6% of the first round of the Levelling Up Fund (expenditure deadline March 24/March 25).This must be acknowledged, as it has led to a significant gap between funds allocated and actual spending, but this issue is rarely discussed at a regional and local level.
It is not just whether local areas are delivering but if they are delivering the correct projects in which there remains a disconnect between economic and social priorities.While the LUWP recognises that good data, monitoring and evaluation are crucial enablers of successful spatial policy, as an enquiry into levelling up funding by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee found, there remain concerns around the government's lack of sufficient data, particularly on how such data was used to inform policy (House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, 2023).Monitoring and evaluation of projects remains limited; civil servants are responsible for identifying and prioritising issues based on anecdotal evidence without sufficient data and evidence about the needs of local communities.When national evaluations do occur, as with the Coastal Communities Fund 2022, such evaluations rarely get considered at devolved levels.It will be necessary for an incoming national government after the 2024 election to reconsider the relationship between local and central government, with particular attention needed to move away from Whitehall's approach of distrust towards local government to overcome fragmentation at city and regional levels.The Local authorities also remain heavily dependent on central government grants and have experienced a plethora of competitive funding opportunities.In the financial year 2021/22, there were 331 competitive funding streams, including three of the four funds discussed (Cabinet Office, 2023).Nationally, local authorities are forced to participate in a culture of speculating to accumulate, investing financial resources, and staffing into bid creation with no guarantee of success.The preparation and submission of bids for competitive funding streams often require the assistance of consultancy firms, which local authorities have come to rely on as their in-house capacity has diminished.Local authorities in the North East cumulatively spent in excess of £3.8 million in bids for the FSHF, Town Deals and the LUF, with County Durham spending £1.3 million on consultancy fees to develop bids yet did not receive any funding (Dubas-Fisher & Parsons, 2023).Although the government has indicated an intention to reduce the frequency of competitive funds (House of Commons Library Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, 2023), the Treasury maintains firm control over levelling up finances and has shown increasing mistrust towards DLUHC, removing the department's ability to approve capital projects after concerns were raised about its ability to deliver value for money (Williams et al., 2023).
The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, which is currently in the consideration of amendments stage in Parliament at the time of writing, grants the Government a degree of flexibility in assessing levelling up progress.This includes the ability to revise mission progress methodology, metrics and target dates, as well as the ability to decide to no longer pursue a mission.Such freedom is problematic and allows the government to reconfigure what they constitute as a successful levelling-up effort, threatening to perpetuate the cycle of lack of transparency and accountability in urban and regional spatial policy within the UK.

Changing central and sub-national governance relationships
Westminster's polity centrality has been increasingly challenged in recent years, first by the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and later by increased sub-regional devolution across England seen as a crucial element of the levelling up agenda.The desire of these devolved bodies to pursue their own distinct policy agendas has become more apparent to the public, resulting in a fragmented dispersion of responsibilities across a mosaic of public, private, and voluntary/community agencies (Elliott et al., 2021).The implementation of 'deal' policies in such a fragmented and inconsistent manner is hindering progress in addressing regional and local inequalities.Furthermore, there is a concern that the devolution of central government offices to places like Wolverhampton and Darlington may play into the Treasury's hands by making integrated policy-making even more challenging to implement at both central and local levels.
Against this backdrop, the United Kingdom has embodied two dominant public administration paradigms over the last 40 years.The first is New Public Management (NPM), prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasising managerial and structural reform (Hood, 1991;Ferlie et al., 1996).The second is New Public Governance (NPG), which postulates a collaborative approach among public managers to co-create, design and deliver public services to tackle economic and social challenges (Osborne, 2010;Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011).Manifestations of NPM and NPG can be seen across successive UK governments since the 1980s, representing a rejection of the post-war welfare state in favour of a more minimalist state.From 1979 to 1997, Conservative governments enacted several reforms inspired by NPM, including privatising public services, outsourcing, and adopting private-sector management practices (Elliott et al., 2021).The following Labour (1997( -2010( ), Coalition (2010( -2015) ) and Conservative (2015present) governments have continued the trend of reducing the power and resources of both central and local governments.This trend has been compounded by the austerity agenda since 2010, undermining local government's ability to deliver transformational change effectively and creating a myriad of quangos and agencies demanding more effective coordination.(Figure 1)

Devolution in the north east
Governance in the North East region remained superfluous until late 2022 when the government announced a new devolution deal for the North East region between the local authorities of Northumberland, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland, and County Durham (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 2022).Unifying the region's fragmented and complex governance structure has remained challenging in recent years, with failures including the previous collapse of a regional devolution deal in 2016.The new arrangement will simplify the current fragmented and complex governance system in the region (see Figure 2  The new mayor, due for election in May 2024, will collectively represent a population of over 1,970,000 people, with access to new devolved powers and a £1.4 billion 'North-East Investment Fund' worth £48 million annually for 30 years.Analysis of funding calculates that the total 30-year investment per person in the region will be £711, or an annual perhead sum of £24 (Myer, 2023).In addition to the investment fund, the deal includes a City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement of up to £563 million capital funding until 2026/ 27, £17.4 million for building brownfield residential development, £20 million of capital funding for place-based economic regeneration.Taking these into consideration, the total funding per person over a period of 30 years amounts to £1,036 (Coombes, 2023).The deal also includes full devolution of the Adult Education Budget (AEB) starting in 2024/25.In total, it is expected to unlock £4.2 billion of investment over 30 years.
Several early strategic priorities have been outlined for the new MCA, including devolution of adult education, development of a green superport, creation of an investment zone, brownfield housing, regeneration funding, and improvements to transportation.However, nothing will be completed until the election of the new Mayor in May 2024, which itself has been shrouded in uncertainty.The current Mayor of the existing North of Tyne Mayoral Combined Authority (NOTCA), Jamie Driscoll, was not chosen as the official Labour candidate; instead, they are running as an independent candidate.The official Labour candidate for this position is the incumbent Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, Kim McGuinness.At the time of writing, it remains to be seen if the Conservative Party intend to field a candidate with national influence, and other party candidates are yet to be announced.
While the new series of devolution deals shifts decision-making in some areas to local leaders, the UK remains one of the most centralised advanced democracies (Travers, 2021).Control of local government shape, power and responsibilities remains concentrated in Westminster, which can vary these based on how it sees fit (Palese, 2022).While the government sees the combined authority and metro-mayor model as both an end in itself and a means to address social and economic issues (Hoole et al., 2023).Hildreth and Bailey acknowledge levelling up cannot be achieved through top-down mandates.Instead, there must be an understanding that historical legacies, cultural nuances, and geographical attributes intricately shape local governance contexts, and the imposition of top-down governance models is ineffective in creating successful place-based policies (Hildreth & Bailey, 2023).While the new NEMCA may create an environment in which policy development is more closely aligned with the economic geography of the whole region, in general, as Hoole et al. argue, 'English devolution has not provided subnational authorities with the capacity and capability to develop local growth strategies or deliver effective place-based interventions' (Hoole et al., 2023).
7. The regional leadership and debate: addressing the need for greater engagement New regional leadership in the form of a metro mayor will be established after the election of the North East mayor in May 2024.The concept of metro mayors has emerged organically over time rather than being a planned aspect of national governance (Roberts, 2020), introducing an 'American style' of politics into English governance (Hambleton & Sweeting, 2014).Despite being commonplace internationally, the mayoral model was met with scepticism by some who thought the idea of having powerful individual leaders was incompatible with England's prevailing political culture and would be characterised by compromise and gridlock rather than decisive local leadership (Fenwick & Elcock, 2014).
While the mayoral model has faced challenges in certain areas, particularly when the boundaries of Mayoral CAs do not align with economic activity or the electorate's sense of place, such as in the 'Tees Valley' (Fenwick & Johnston, 2019), the existence of metro mayors has been seen to bring benefits to regions and the broader governance landscape (Paun et al., 2022;Breach, 2021), at least in terms of providing voice, as in the case of Greater Manchester and Teesside.
The metro mayors of the North of Tyne and Tees Valley CAs in the North East region see themselves as examples of devolution working effectively.Jamie Driscoll, the mayor of the smaller NOTCA since 2019, argues his administration has been responsible for creating 14 years' worth of jobs paying a living wage or higher and for every £1 invested by the CA, more than £3 is returned to the Treasury in payroll taxes (Driscoll, 2022).In the Tees Valley MCA, the personal energy and qualities of Mayor Ben Houchen appear to have, in general, positively impacted the economy and governance of the area (Smyth, 2021).The new NEMCA is set to elect its first mayor in 2024 and will benefit from all powers associated with a level three devolution deal.
By design, mayors have had a reliance on exercising their soft power.Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has gained recognition as a city-regional leader for engaging with central government, attracting potential investors, and enhancing the city's appeal internationally.Burham has been a vocal advocate for deepening devolution, and the recent trailblazer deals for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands have sought to increase local control in these CAs.Ensuring such local leaders have the power to make decisions is crucial to the levelling Up agenda.Discussions about building back better need to involve a new evaluation of local policies and investment plans in many localities, which is not currently happening.
In the North East, there still remains a failure to engage in debate on what the key priorities for the future will be.As a result, there is a tendency to seek the same solutions to old problems rather than taking a more forward-thinking approach.This lack of debate is exacerbated by central and local government's poor institutional memory and limited ability to assess what has and has not worked in the past (Norris & Adam, 2017).This threatens to lead to a continued cycle of perpetuating old solutions and failed policies.There is a need to re-invigorate public sector entrepreneurialism to look at problems differently and come up with more appropriate answers to 2030 and 2050 problems in areas such as skills, work, housing, transport, net zero and health and well-being for which the new combined authority has no official remit.However, the work of the Integrated Care Board and the four Integrated Care Partnerships are critical to the North East's economic and social development.

The future of work and skills: challenges and opportunities in the north east
The need to seek novel approaches to solve many of the region's perennial problems includes stimulating a more substantial discussion about the challenges and opportunities related to the future of work and skills needs.The changing nature of work and the failure of skills policies to evolve are of particular concern for residents in places like Gateshead, Blyth, and Middlesbrough.While infrastructure projects may provide a visible representation of levelling up, their impact is limited if individuals in 'left-behind' areas do not have access to quality jobs or adequate housing and transport.It is crucial for discussions on levelling up to consider these local challenges and opportunities related to the future of work and skills rather than solely focusing on physical infrastructure.
With the shift towards advanced robotics and AI in the region, it is necessary to ask if people in the region are being adequately prepared for the changing economic base.Evaluating whether schools and FE colleges have the correct curricula for future skills is essential.In many instances, significant numbers of international workers are coming into the region's labour market in areas such as healthcare and the NHS.While the frequency of transient workers is also increasing, a contrast remains with many local workers remaining stuck in their localities without a means of escape.Often, 'face-toface' jobs are the only available roles in 'left behind places' where the skills base is low.Future labour policy must ensure it pays more attention to hybrid and in-person working practices and to skills strategy.

The future of the north east region
Despite some endeavours to tackle regional inequalities, including in the North East, efforts have largely remained confined to mere rhetoric; the levelling up agenda combining the target-orientated approach of the New Labour era with a policy branding approach designed to show commitment to regional development (Fransham et al., 2023).Specifically, the North East region risks falling even further behind as its economic and social conditions continue to deteriorate (Forbes et al., 2022).
Devolution and the creation of the new NEMCA provide the region with the opportunity to overcome the fragmentation and lack of strategic leadership that consistently held the region back.As the unifier of seven local authorities in the region, the MCA should have a renewed focus on constructing a better central-local debate about the region's direction.The establishment of the new North East All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) is perhaps a positive and welcome step towards facilitating such a constructive dialogue (North East APPG, 2023).Bodies such as the newly established Insights North East can help to facilitate a collaborative model of engagement between the stakeholders and organisations across the region, building on existing policy brokerage and engagement assets across the regional universities (Insights North East, 2022).
Priority should be given to areas such as adult skills and the role of higher and further education to support the development of skills training and pathways into work.The old 2013 LEP employment plan needs urgent revision for a new context.New sectoral priorities involved in the green transformation will also be required.Indeed, there is an argument to be made for the necessity of a new economic model (McLeod & Rayner, 2023).A focus on economic growth, inward investment and a reliance on the trickle-down effect alone will not solve the deep-rooted generational issues in the region without a stronger focus on social and environmental policies.Strategic priorities to 2030 should be established with a clear set of priorities for development across the region, which encompasses priorities for the levelling up funding initiatives directed towards the region.

Conclusion: levelling up or levelling down?
The authors argue that the North-East region is now at an impasse.The regional and local economy continues to struggle, but the economic and social situation is worst in the south of the region.Levelling-up policies are failing to reach communities and address their particular needs, both urban and rural.Delivery and impact remain limited because of local authority capacity issues, and the ongoing local impact of COVID-19 continues to present numerous economic and social problems.Decisions on sub-national and regional governance have long been fragmented, with a consequential negative impact on the ability to narrow regional inequalities.The promise is that fragmentation will be overcome, and delivery will start in 2024 with the enlarged CA.Whilst we hope and wish this to be the case, the new institution will be established during a General Election campaign with a new Government at the centre.
Levelling up policy in the region is in need of review, and the incoming government will need a fresh approach.However, it remains to be seen if a new, larger combined authority can overcome the long-standing decline and fragmentation in the North East to and deliver better governance.Solutions for the region do not solely lie in funding and new infrastructure; they are more deeply rooted in the prolonged decline and reduction of local government funding since 2010.Can stronger local leadership and integrated governance mechanisms at a subregional level better align levelling up in the period ahead?Can it overcome the capacity and finance issues in new and evolving policy arenas?Only time will reveal whether these changes will prove effective, as devolution alone may not be sufficient to bring about the necessary transformation.
In any circumstance, delivery will only proceed in earnest in the period between 2025-2030.Attention must now be directed towards this period.It necessitates a new regional summit and a new economic, social, and environmental strategy for a new era.If local powers and capabilities are not sufficiently robust and strong enough to change the trajectory of a lagging region like the North East, then inequalities will persist.If levelling up is seen to be failing, we argue that regional leaders must step up their efforts in shaping more effective, targeted, and appropriate alternative future scenarios.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This research was funded by Northumbria University.
), absorbing the existing North of Tyne Mayoral CA, North-East Combined Authority, Transport North East and the small North-East LEP, among several smaller other quangos.An interim Chief Executive has now been appointed to bring the new enlarged authority together and necessitates the seven local authorities to work closely together in collaboration with a new mayor set to be elected in May 2024.For some, the new configuration harks back to the abolished Tyne and Wear County Council established in April 1974 as part of the Thatcher local government reorganisation under the Local Government Act 1972.Headquartered in Newcastle Upon Tyne, the council was the amalgamation of the metropolitan boroughs of Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland, Gateshead, North Tyneside and South Tyneside.It existed until 1986 when it was abolished along with five other metropolitan county councils under the Local Government Act of 1985.It was succeeded by five new unitary authorities, the metropolitan borough councils of North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland, and Newcastle City Council.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Complex Sub-National Governance in The North East Region Before the North East Devolution Deal 2022 Source: (Shutt & Liddle, 2020).

Table 1 .
Overview of Key Statistics in the North East Region, 2019-2023.
Employment Rate: ONS Labour Force Survey Headline Indicators [Accessed via Nomis] Child Poverty: End Child Poverty Commission Crime: ONS Crime in England & Wales Community Safety Partnership Tables Suicide Rate: Office for Health Improvement and Disparities: Local Authority Health Profiles Healthy Life Expectancy: Office for Health Improvement and Disparities: Local Authority Health Profiles

Table 2 .
Overview of Major Funding Streams in the North East Region since 2019.seems intent on trying to resolve this problem by shifting to Mayoral Development Corporations (MDCs), especially in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool.Still, it may be too late to deliver much before the next general election. government Professor Joyce Liddle is Professor of Public Leadership and Enterprise at Newcastle Business School.A graduate of Durham and Warwick Universities, research in local/regional government, public leadership & entrepreneurship, partnerships.Was Honorary Chair of the UK Joint University Council (Public Administration Committee) and has held full Chairs in Nottingham Trent, Teesside, Aix en Provence, France, and Northumbria.Led research centres in Public Policy, Management and Leadership, Gouvernance regionale/management publique.Successful bids for research funds from national/international funders, including UKRI, Research England, HEIF, Regional Studies Association, Horizon Europe.Regular reviewer/rapporteur for most Research Councils (UKRI, ESRC, RE, BA, Leverhulme).REF advisor in 2014 and 2021 to 6 separate UK Universities.Professor John Shutt is Professor of Public Policy and Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.He joined NBS in 2018 from Leeds and is a graduate of Leeds Beckett, Birmingham and Cardiff Universities.He has also been a Visiting Professor at the College of Business and Management at Zhejiang University of Technology (ZJUT) in Hangzhou, China.He was Professor at Leeds Beckett University from 1994-2018 and Director of ERBEDU at Leeds Business School, the Policy Research Institute.He was Deputy Director of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES); local government's economic think tank still based in Manchester and takes a strong interest in Northern economic development.Cameron Forbes is Research Assistant at Northumbria University.A Politics and International Relations graduate from the University of Hull, he worked as a parliamentary researcher before taking up his current position.He is actively involved in economic regeneration and levelling up projects, a Local Government Information Unit project looking into a comparative local government finance project focusing on non-anglophone finance systems and a project with Insights North East in collaboration with the Durham Miners' Association.